One Hot Summer Page 7

  She shouldered past the groomsmen. Her hips cocked as she swaggered his way. He tore his attention from her body and locked gazes with her, his pulse pounding. A fire kicked to life inside him. Time for some fun.…

  “How is it that you have the power to wrap every man you see around your little finger?” he said.

  “Except you,” she tossed out with a shrug.

  “I’m impervious to your feminine wiles.” He nodded to the groomsmen who still stood in a cluster where she’d left them, as though they couldn’t accept that they’d been dismissed. “Unlike those half-wits.”

  “That wasn’t my feminine wiles you were witnessing with those guys. That was my finely honed skill of wrangling drunk people.”

  “That’s something you’ve devoted a lot of time to practicing, like at one of those California party colleges? I wouldn’t go bragging about that if I were you.”

  “Not college. Weddings. Drunk wrangling is a big part of my job. Huge.”

  So much for the romance of weddings. “You’re kidding.”

  “Every week, every wedding.”

  Now that he was considering it, she had a point. Near about every wedding Micah had attended produced an overabundance of drunkards by the end of the night. “My condolences, though the drunk wrangling doesn’t explain why every single groomsman at this reception was hitting on you.”

  With a wry smile, she ran her hands down her dress. “Look at me. I’m unobtainable and dressed like a virgin librarian. All those guys you saw want to be the one man with the macho power to corrupt my innocence and introduce me to the world’s many wicked pleasures.”

  He laughed at the deprecating self-descriptor. Yeah, her getup was drab as hell, but still, a virgin librarian she was not. “It’s a good thing they didn’t see you prancing around in that bikini last weekend at the river or they’d realize they’re the ones in danger of being corrupted by your wicked ways.”

  An image rolled through his mind about the way her water-slick, tanned curves had writhed and bounced as Chet and Dusty had dragged her into the river shallows and tried to teach her how to two-step. Shifting, his body turning restless, he locked his jaw and set his focus on the stars lifting up from the dark silhouettes of the hilltops. He could not have this woman. He had rules against that kind of fraternization for a reason. He should have followed his gut and made that U-turn to home instead of returning to the resort tonight.

  Her voice cut through his self-flagellation. “Are you making a crack about my virtue?” She set her hands on her hips and thrust her chest out. “Because my virtue happens to love this season’s Dolce & Gabbana swimwear collection, thank you very much.”

  That was the most ridiculous sentence he’d heard uttered outside of his TV set. He pinched the bridge of his nose against smiling, but a snort of laughter still managed to escape. Man, was she out of place in Ravel County. “For your information, California, I was making a crack about the groomsmen’s narcissism, not you.” He flicked a glance in her direction, valiantly fighting the urge—and failing—to rake his gaze over her body. “But don’t get me started about how those itty-bitty pieces of fabric you were wearing at the river threatened to corrupt my virtue.”

  He braced himself for a witty retort or scathing commentary on the irredeemable nature of his virtue, but she didn’t take the softball pitch he’d tossed her.

  From the corner of his eye he watched her shoulders lift as she inhaled deeply. On a purr of an exhale, she smiled, triumphant. “Mmm. Chief Garrity, I love knowing how much that bothered you.”

  The huskiness in her voice stripped him of all control. Done fighting the urge to drink his fill of her, he tore his gaze from the horizon, but all he caught was her trademark sashay as she left him in her dust and walked into the tent.

  Whistling under his breath, he spun away from the reception and started back toward his truck. Time for him to get the hell out of California’s orbit before he lost his careful control and fell into rank with the groomsmen trailing behind her like a pack of fools.

  Chapter Five

  Thursday evening, Remedy dropped into a chair in Alex’s office, which shared a wall with her own on the south side of the resort’s main building. She hadn’t yet forgiven him for hanging her out to dry with Micah the previous weekend, but she decided that rather than confront Alex about fire code compliances that were now her responsibility anyway, she’d take away the lesson about paying more attention to those kinds of details in the weddings she executed and never again give Micah Garrity a reason to make her feel two inches tall.

  “Tell me this weekend’s weddings are going to be easier than the rehearsal I just attended. No, scratch that, the rehearsal I just refereed.”

  Alex looked at her over a pair of thick-rimmed reading glasses. “Bride troubles?”

  “No. MOB troubles. All of a sudden she’s in a panic that her daughter’s wedding isn’t going to be special enough for her precious baby girl.”

  “Well, bless her heart,” Alex said, his words dripping with a perfect blend of condescension and dismissal.

  So far, that was Remedy’s favorite Texas saying. She could listen to it said in a wry drawl all day long. Would she ever be Texas enough to get away with tossing out bless your heart grenades the way Alex and Litzy and Skeeter did? One could dream, though Remedy had the sinking feeling that she’d forever be an outsider in Dulcet.

  “Sometimes I want to sit the brides and their mothers down,” she said. “I’d tell them, ‘I’m sorry to break this to you, but I’ve thrown forty other weddings that were identical to yours, and that’s just this year alone. This is as special as it gets.’”

  “I wish. Especially with this family. You’ve already gotten a taste of their unique brand of dysfunction. Last summer, they held a wedding here for their eldest daughter and it was a scene. Not the worst we’ve had, but close. Oh, and they’re drinkers, too. Every last one of them. For tomorrow’s wedding we’ve ordered four times the usual order of tequila.”

  Remedy groaned. Tequila shots were a wedding planner’s worst nightmare. Sometime between Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” and Pee-wee Herman’s table dance, it seeped into the collective American consciousness that tequila shots equaled an insta-party. Combine that with an inhibition-lowering event like a wedding and throw in a bunch of people who weren’t big drinkers in their everyday lives and even the most wealthy, conservative demographic could devolve into a tequila-fueled, hedonistic hot mess.

  “Dysfunctional family drama and rowdy tequila drinkers? Fantastic.” She flipped through Alex and Carina’s meticulous notes on that weekend’s BEOs. “Are we ready with everything we can control?”

  “Definitely. Including extra security that will be on hand until three a.m. both weekend mornings,” Alex said.

  “Judging by the room reservation block to wedding guest ratio, it looks like almost all the guests are staying at the resort. At least we won’t have to worry about drunk drivers.”

  “That’s a very good thing.” Alex stifled a yawn. “I suggest we all go home and get a good night’s sleep, because it’s going to be a hell of a weekend. Besides, Xavier’s starting to expect me for dinner every night, now that we found ourselves a wedding planner worth her snuff.”

  The compliment caught her off-guard, so much so that she didn’t register the moment as the perfect window to ask about Micah Garrity being best friends with Xavier. “Thank you, darlin’, and bless your heart,” she said in her best southern drawl.

  Alex snorted through his nose. “Nice try, but your accent still needs work. And, FYI, saying ‘bless your heart’ when someone compliments you is actually insulting.”

  “Really? Darn it! I thought I was getting the hang of all this Texas lingo. I’m trying to blend in. Do as the natives do and all that.”

  With a shake of his head, he stood, stuffing his phone in his pocket in preparation to leave. “Remember when E.T. tried to disguise himself in lady clothes?”

  She
winced. “I’m that bad?”

  “Maybe stop trying so hard to fit in. Embrace your otherness. Part of the reason we hired you is the fresh perspective you offer the resort.”

  Remedy’s otherness was something she’d long ago made her peace with. She’d been an outsider, a downright alien, most of her life, even in Los Angeles. Yes, sometimes it was isolating and sometimes the loneliness seized hold of her in vulnerable moments, late at night or when her job got her down, but there was nothing to be done about it—even if, just once, it would be a refreshing change of pace to fit in somewhere.

  After bidding Alex good night, she walked through the maze of hallways to the employee exit. Stepping outside, she groaned at the wave of sticky heat that hit her. Chet and Dusty had mentioned at the river that it was shaping up to be a hot, dry summer, but she didn’t even think it’d be possible to light a match at the moment, given all the moisture in the air.

  She cut a path through the soup-like humidity to the nearest golf cart and took off to the employee parking lot at the southwest edge of the resort. Lifting her chin to the hot wind would have to suffice until she got home. Please let the air conditioner be working tonight.

  As she drove, she ran a mental check of the food in her fridge. Unless the grocery fairies had visited while she was at work, she was out of luck. She hoped something in town would be open besides the grocery store.

  She rounded a line of hedges hiding the parking lot from resort guests’ view, and the moment her car came into sight she slammed on the cart’s brakes. “Motherfucker.”

  The roof of her car was covered with Skeeter’s runaway pigeons.

  Honking, she gunned the engine on the golf cart. “Get off my car, you beady-eyed bastards!”

  The vermin were nonplussed.

  Waving her arms, honking more, she pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. “Stupid vermin! You’re supposed to be homing pigeons, so go home and leave me alone!”

  The front edge of the golf cart bounced off the bumper of her car with a decisive crunch of glass and metal. The pigeons didn’t stir, but if one were to look close they’d probably see actual, literal smoke coming out of Remedy’s ears. Too angry to curse, she smacked the steering wheel, then craned her neck out of the side of the cart and growled. Two birds looked her way, bored.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  What the hell was it going to take to get those rodents off her car? She grabbed her purse and leapt from her seat, swinging her purse over her head and shouting. The pigeons did take notice of that. She lined a nice fat one up in her sights and swung, but as her purse curved in its direction the whole flock fluttered off her roof and congregated in the nearest tree.

  “That’s right!” she hollered, pointing at them. “You’d better fly away, you weasely-ass monkeys! You’re a hundred times worse than Gwyneth.”

  At the sound of a gasp, Remedy’s eyes went wide. Oh, God. She wasn’t alone. On the far side of the lot, an older woman in a housekeeping uniform gaped at her. And who could blame her? Remedy looked downright bonkers. Remedy slapped a smile on her lips, smoothed her skirt, and waved. “Just working through some anger management issues. Have a great weekend!”

  Without waiting for the other woman to respond, Remedy pivoted on her heel and marched to the golf cart. No matter how many times she turned the key or how vigorously she pleaded with it, the engine wouldn’t catch. Maybe it needed to sit and rest overnight. That sometimes worked, didn’t it? It wasn’t blocking any other cars, so what was the harm? She’d try starting it up again the next morning before contacting Maintenance. After her run-in with Gwyneth and the sand trap, the last thing Remedy needed was another ruined golf cart during her first month on the job.

  She didn’t bother to count the number of bird poop splotches on her car’s roof as she unlocked the door. Between the pigeons, the backcountry roads she traversed every day, and the afternoon thunderstorms, her car would never be clean again anyway. That was one luxury she hadn’t realized about living in Los Angeles—when she got her car washed, it had stayed clean for a while.

  With the housekeeping employee looking on in stunned silence, Remedy attempted to back her car out without hitting the golf cart. She tapped it a few times with her front bumper, but only a little. Not that an extra scratch or dent would be noticeable, given either vehicle’s current state. She waved again at her spectator as she pulled past her, then gave a subtle raising of her middle finger to her new feathered enemies who were still watching her from above, and didn’t release her first full breath until she was out of the lot and on the road to downtown Dulcet.

  Dulcet had already rolled up its carpets by the time Remedy turned onto the main drag. In search of a restaurant that was still open, she cruised slowly past brick churches, a grocery store, several salons, a library, a post office that shared a building with the city offices, and a lot of shops that seemed to support the wedding industry at the resort. She counted at least three jewelers and a handful of bridal shops, though two of them had banners strung up in the windows advertising “going out of business” sales.

  She let her attention linger on the firehouse, a tall, boxy brick building dominated by two huge roll-up garage doors. It looked as though the firefighters’ residences were behind the garage, in the back of the building, judging by the lights glowing through the windows along the side. In a driveway between the firehouse and the residential cottage next door sat a hulking shiny white truck tricked out with plenty of bells and whistles and with Ravel County Fire Chief painted on the side within a fire engine red stripe. Micah Garrity’s truck.

  A rush of awareness flooded through her. They didn’t grow them like that in Los Angeles. Big and tough. Virile in a way that even the stuntmen in her parents’ movies couldn’t pull off. Every move he made and every word he said was infused with a full-throttle confidence that commanded attention. And while that made him infuriating and domineering in exactly the way she hated men to be, she’d still given his oh-so-ripped body a thorough perusal every chance she’d gotten.

  She wasn’t the only one sneaking glances, though. There had been no mistaking the heat in his gaze when he’d watched her that first day they met at the river or last Saturday night at the wedding reception. She had no interest in letting an alpha male take over her life, but there was no denying their mutual attraction—an attraction she planned to keep fighting tooth and nail.

  She chuckled through a grimace at that realization. It’d been a while since a man had gotten under her skin, and Micah Garrity had done it while chewing on toothpicks and smirking at her from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. Go figure.

  She indulged in one last look at his truck, then wrenched her gaze away. “Oh, Remedy. You’re hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.”

  She kept cruising until the downtown area faded into a residential neighborhood. All right, then, she had two dinner options besides the grocery store: the ice-cream shop and Petey’s Diner. On the sign next to the carefully carved letters of the diner’s name was a painting of a stout white dog with a black circle around one eye smiling out at the street. The dog looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen that before.

  She parked her car on the street out front and stepped into the heat again, becoming instantly sticky with perspiration. Dodging a massive crack in the sidewalk filled with muddy water that rippled in the breeze, she hustled through the diner door.

  The moment she pushed the diner door open, the meaning of the diner’s name and the dog painted outside dawned on her. Every square inch of wall was covered with memorabilia from the Little Rascals. Petey, she now recalled, was the Little Rascals’ dog. She spun a slow circle, taking in the walls of framed magazines and newspaper articles, movie posters and autographed head shots. So much old Hollywood that the diner felt like a sliver of home.

  Home. As though Burbank and the Hollywood scene had ever felt like home when she’d lived there. Maybe it had felt like home, after al
l, but in the thick of the L.A. drama she hadn’t recognized its place in her heart. Maybe when she went back someday it’d feel different. Familiar.

  Maybe.

  But she had no plans of going anywhere anytime soon. Head down, nose to the grindstone, she was going to keep pouring 100 percent of herself into her job at Briscoe Ranch.

  The man behind the diner’s main counter was freckled, with black hair and a cowlick worthy of Alfalfa. He cast a bored gaze at Remedy as he stacked red plastic food baskets beneath the kitchen pass-through window. “Welcome to Petey’s. Sit where you want. I’ll send Barbara over.”

  A few families and groups of teens were scattered at tables throughout the restaurant. Remedy slid into a chair at a table along the wall, the better to people watch. She plucked a menu from the stack stuffed into the napkin holder, but her attention was caught by the television mounted behind the counter, where a commercial for her dad’s new movie was playing. It was an action flick about a kidnapped daughter and had a bland, generic title Remedy couldn’t remember.

  Her mother liked to grouch that the new flurry of action roles for male actors in their fifties and sixties were pandering to the men of the world’s midlife crisis fantasies, but Dad just laughed her off. The movies paid well and Dad was having a blast.

  Long after the commercial ended, about the time that Remedy concluded that this Barbara waitress was imaginary, the diner door jingled, opening. The threshold was filled from floor to ceiling with Micah Garrity’s silhouette. Remedy’s heart did a little skip—like she was a smitten schoolgirl. Pathetic.

  He wore a dark ball cap pulled low over his eyes and a snug-fitting navy blue T-shirt, the stretched cotton molding over his muscles. From beneath his dark jeans a pair of black boots jutted out. No sir, they definitely did not grow them like that in Los Angeles. He was a pure Texas male to his core.

  The man behind the bar broke out in a huge smile. “Chief, hey! Welcome. Let me get Barbara to show you to our best table.”